Regifting

Education may not have been their original passion, but it sure is now.

Three distinguished Harvard College alumni -- Alan Bersin, A.B.'68, Todd Gutschow, A.B.'83, and Jeff Mayersohn, A.B.'73 -- have become so involved in the field that they donated their class reunion funds, which would ordinarily go to the school from which they graduated, to the Ed School last June. With their respective spouses, the establishment of the Lisa Foster and Alan Bersin Financial Aid Fund in Education Leadership, the Todd and Mari Gutschow Financial Aid Fund, and the Mayerhsohn-Seamonson Financial Aid Fund showcases their personal drive to help future generations address the challenges facing the country's public education system.

Harvard's new gift policy allows for donations to be credited to an individual's own school, but actually get earmarked for another at Harvard if the donor wishes to support a different academic discipline.

"This represents a major change in Harvard's approach to fundraising that benefits the smaller professional schools significantly," says Bersin of the policy. "The Ed School is taking a national lead in reimagining educational leadership, and we want to invest in that development to help make a difference."

Though Bersin's undergraduate degree at Harvard was in government, and he spent years as a corporate lawyer and federal prosecutor, he made a career shift to education in 1998 when a group of San Diego civic leaders asked him to consider becoming the school superintendent in that city. Serving in that role through 2005 exposed Bersin to the interaction among administrators, teachers, and students as well as to the theory, policy, and practice of urban public education. This experience, in turn, led to continued high-powered education roles, including an 18-month stint as secretary of education for the state of California in the administration of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bersin, current chair of the HGSE Visiting Committee and a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, is serving his third year as a member of California's State Board of Education.

Bersin is hopeful that the leadership fund in his and his wife's names will help address two key areas in the education sector with which he is deeply concerned: the equity agenda and the national competitiveness agenda.

"Perhaps for the first time in our history, a social justice agenda in education intersects precisely with the requirements of enhanced national competitiveness. We can neither tolerate nor afford an academic achievement gap based on class or race. HGSE can make an important contribution to building capacity in our public schools to meet this challenge."

Both Bersin and Gutschow had extremely positive public education experiences of their own. Growing up in Brooklyn, Bersin says that his time as a young student gave him deeprooted ideals in public service, as did Gutschow's middle school and high school years in Sheboygan, Wis.

A middle school science teacher actually encouraged Gutschow to consider attending a college like Harvard when otherwise he may not have applied.

Gutschow's undergraduate physics degree from Harvard led to work in the technology industry, and the founding of his own credit card fraud-detecting company, HNC Software, in 1986. HNC started with two people and grew to more than 1,300 by the time it went public in 1995. After HNC was acquired by Fair Isaac in 2002, Gutschow retired from the company and started thinking of ways to give back.

He had long been active in a nonprofit organization called AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), which is focused on helping kids figure out how to tap their potential. His is also a member of the Poway Unified School Board in the San Diego area.

"What I am beginning to recognize is that the way we deliver education today is pretty much the way we have been doing it for quite a long time," says Gutschow. "Schools look the same as when I was in school myself. That can't continue."

Gutschow also says that the mode of delivering knowledge should not be the same for everyone. "If the current education model fits with your intelligence mode, it works, but if it doesn't, your ability to learn isn't tapped," he explains. "It's a matter of being able to make education individualized and student-centric. That is what I want to spend the next decade working on."

This educational focus combines Gutschow's interest in technology, innovation, and leadership in schools, and was his big motivator for donating funds to the Ed School.

Mayersohn's interest in the Ed School had its genesis in the day-to-day observation of his children's experiences attending public school in Wellesley, Mass. Almost every year, voters in that community are faced with ballot initiatives that must pass in order to fund critical enhancements to schools, such as fixing boilers or other infrastructure problems.

"Even basic improvement requires special acts to be passed, and not all of them have," explains Mayersohn. "I thought, 'If this is happening in a relatively affluent town, what is happening in other communities throughout the country that don't have the same tax base?'"

With the current economic crisis placing even more of a tight squeeze on state and local budgets, investing in the future of education is something Mayersohn does not want to be ignored. "I'm particularly worried that despite the lip service that might be paid to the issue by political candidates of all stripes, that when nice words about investing come up against economic realities, there won't be any follow through," he says.

Mayersohn's physics degree from Harvard led to a career in technology that continued until recently (see sidebar). He spent almost 20 years with BBN Technologies in a variety of management and technical positions, helped deploy the America Online network while at GTE Internetworking, and most recently worked at Sonus Networks.

Noting the huge pay scale differential between educators and those in technology, and concerned about budgeting moving forward, Mayersohn hopes to aide the next generation of educators through his class gift.

"I greatly admire what teachers do, and I don't like the notion that teachers might come out of their own education in debt," says Mayersohn. "Education is the key to the future of the country, and we are not doing well enough by our kids. A lot of people are motivated to do something about it."

-- Jill Kipnis is a freelance writer based in Northridge, Calif. This is her first piece for Ed.